Opener: As students enter the room, they will immediately begin working on the opener. Please see my instructional strategy clip for how openers work in my classroom (Instructional Strategy - Process for openers). This method of working and going over the opener lends itself to allow students to construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others, which is mathematical practice 3.

Learning Target: After completion of the opener, I will address the day’s learning targets to the students. In today’s lesson, the intended target is, “I can apply everything I have learned this year to solve problems.” Students will jot the learning target down in their agendas (our version of a student planner, there is a place to write the learning target for every day).

Resources (2)

Resources

Sample Test Questions: See video - Why is this lesson important?I am going to present this final review as a room challenge of boys versus girls. Teams will alternate going to the board and answering questions. When a question is presented, both teams are expected to work out the problem first individually, and then share their reasoning with one another. Based on the difficulty level of the problem, the time I give the groups to discuss changes, but I monitor to discussion and call time as I see fit. When I call time, both teams must remain silent until the question has been answered correctly. I will call on any member of the team I choose to go to the board (this is why discussion time is so important) – the person I choose must correctly solve and explain their work, showing all accurate steps – being precise and showing all steps and labeling answers correctly is a large part of this activity, which brings in mathematical practice 6. If the student is able to do that, their team gets to choose one of the five cards containing point values (of course, just for fun – one of the cards will knock out all of their points!). If not, the other team is able to steal – but I choose the person who goes to the board. Not knowing who I am going to call on keeps the kids on their toes, as they do not want to “look stupid” (that’s what they say, not me!!) when up at the board. Part of student success on a state exam is being able to break down questions in an effort to figure out exactly what is being asked. It is important that students are fluent with solving questions that are worded and presented like those on the state exam so that the only thing on their minds during the exam is the content – not the presentation of the content. As with all challenges, students will be asked to persevere with problems and work them out together, which is mathematical practice 1. I am more than willing to help students, but they have to really try first! Additionally, the types of problems I have chosen require that students reason abstractly and quantitatively (mathematical practice 2 ), making sense of words by writing equations or drawing figures. Also, the problems they are solving model real world applications of the topics, which is mathematical practice 4.